Edward Snowden Thinks People Should Outrage More Over Drone Swarms And Military Robots Than 'Expressive' AI Models Protected By 'First Amendment Principles'

Former CIA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden thinks that software engineers working on cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) are being "henpecked" by an aggressively ignorant crowd's "agenda."

What Happened: Snowden's comments came after Alphabet Inc.'s Google Gemini debacle, where the AI chatbot was caught generating irrelevant images for certain prompts, or in other cases, simply refusing to generate an image at all.

"Heartbreaking to see many brilliant minds working on AI so harried and henpecked by the aggressively ignorant crowd’s agenda that they not only adopt the signs and sigils of the hostile illiterati."

Heartbreaking to see many brilliant minds working on AI so harried and henpecked by the aggressively ignorant crowd's agenda that they not only adopt the signs and sigils of the hostile illiterati—some actually begin to believe that their own work is "dangerous" and "wrong." https://t.co/Hd04AVnz8K

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) February 22, 2024

Snowden was referring to the Google Gemini AI chatbot debacle, adding that people who think "poisoning" AI models with safety filters are a "threat to general computation."

See Also: Elon Musk Pushes xAI’s Grok AI Chatbot After Google Gemini Comes Under Fire: ‘Truth… Never Been More Essential’

According to him, software engineers and their work on AI models is being handicapped with an "agenda." He also thinks people's priorities are misplaced and that AI chatbots are protected by "First Amendment principles."

"People should spend more time agitating against drone swarms and military robots—which are already killing people—than they do trying to cripple LLM chatbots and diffusion models."

Then people should spend more time agitating against drone swarms and military robots—which are already killing people—than they do trying to cripple LLM chatbots and diffusion models—which are expressive works that First Amendment principles seek to protect.

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) February 22, 2024

Snowden compared Gemini AI's alleged refusal to generate images of white people to a hypothetical scenario of Google refusing to show search results for a food recipe and instead lecturing about the "dangers of cooking."

Essentially, Snowden's point is AI chatbots should give straightforward answers to queries instead of "lecturing" users.

Why It Matters: Google Gemini's failure to accurately depict the Founding Fathers, Swedish couples, or even Nazi soldiers in the 1940s has drawn sharp criticism from tech billionaires and internet users.

Instead of wasting time and "crippling" AI chatbots, Snowden says there are more important things to worry about.

Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk has gone ahead and fanned flames accusing Google of "rigging the 2024 election," adding that pursuing truth has "never been more essential" in light of the Gemini incident.

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Photo courtesy: Antonio Marín Segovia on Flickr